Global PVR sales tripled in 2003

A phenomenom-in-waiting, Personal Video Recorders, have finally -- after five years in market -- gained significant popularity. The latest stats from In-Stat/MDR reveal that the global sales of PVR units more than tripled in 2003 compared to 2002.

PVR units (sometimes also known as DVR units) are basically just modern video recorders that replace old dusty VHS tapes with big harddrives and store the content in MPEG-2 format to the HDD. Most of the PVR units have a built-in MPEG-2 encoder/decoder and they simply encode the incoming analog signal to MPEG-2 format and store that to the HDD. Some, although still quite rarely, units are designed to work directly with digital TV transmissions and they don't do any further encoding to the video, but simply store the digital TV's MPEG-2 stream as it is to the HDD, thus keeping the broadcast quality intact.

The wave of DVD recorders that incorporate PVR functionality within the device were the major force behind the sales boom. The other significant factor was the rise of satellite TV set-top boxes that included PVR capabilities -- for example the Britain's main digital TV provider, Sky Digital, has persuaded thousands of users to pay slightly more on monthly basis for its Sky+ service that is basically just the set-top box with big hard drive.

In year 2002, the global sales were 1.5M units and in 2003 the sales had risen to 4.6M units. Japan is one of the main markets for the DVD-PVR combos at the moment and the country's TV stations' digitalization process is more than likely to speed up the sales of devices that incorporate DVD recorders, personal video recorders and digital set-top boxes into one unit.

For questions and answers about PVR devices, we recommend that you visit our PVR forum room.

1 user comment

When digital hi-def really hits the market the broadcast flag will cripple that growth spurt in a big hurry. When people find out they can only record the low rez analog feed even though their PVR is capable of capturing the full rez version they will be PISSED. Most of the current crop of PVRs can't record hi-def digital. Perhaps hardware manufacturers will never mass market ones that can if the FCC and hollywood succeed in making them useless. Or perhaps Digital Rights Management will ride in to save the day. People love that $hit... VCRs killed the movie industry, remember?